John Williams Will Be Back to Score ‘Star Wars: Episode IX’

John Williams might set yet another awards record at the Oscars this year if he’s nominated for either The Post or Star Wars: The Last Jedi, bringing his total number of nominations up to 51 or 52 — the most any living person has ever gotten. The man is about to be 86 years old, but he’s not stopping yet: Williams recently confirmed that he’ll be back to do the score of Star Wars: Episode IX.

Williams has done music for eight out of the nine Star Wars movies that have been released, and was nominated for an Academy Award for four of them. Though he won’t be composing the entire score for the upcoming Solo: A Star Wars Story, he’ll be doing a theme for John Powell to jump off from. When he confirmed to Variety that he’d be back for J.J. Abrams’ Episode IX, he said he’d “very much like to complete” the series.

Williams’ score for The Last Jedi featured some of his most recognizable themes as well as his most fun and creative work to date – especially the music for the Canto Bight casino scene. “There were guys pulling out plastic trumpets and dog-chew toys to be used as plungers,” Rian Johnson told Variety about the day Williams and his orchestra recorded that piece. “John was like a little kid that day.”

Johnson even said that he loved Williams’ score so much, he’d like to release a version of The Last Jedi “without the dialogue and effects, just the music played in the foreground. All of the accompanimental music will be brought forward — every gesture, the music traveling along with the moods and textures, references to characters and so on.”